Intel Clarkdale vs AMD Phenom II with 785G – Mainstream Showdown

With the launch of Clarkdale by Intel, they have finally released a Nehalem for the masses, the Core i3 and i5 variations with integrated graphics are a direct competitor to the market segment currently held by AMD Phenom and Athlon CPUs. In this article we compare the performance of the IGP on the Intel Core i5 661 to and AMD system with 785G chipset.

Cinebench R10 test results

Cinebench R10

Cinebench is a benchmark that fully stresses the CPU and measures the raw power of your processing unit by rendering a high-quality image.

In the single threaded benchmark test, the Core i5 661 outperforms the Phenom II X4 965, however the true quad core nature of the Phenom is clearly better in multi-threaded rendering.

Comment
from jmke@ 2010/01/11

Comment
from wutske@ 2010/01/11

Too bad the memory timings of both systems weren't the same because this biasses the results (as you've mentioned in the review).

Comment
from jmke@ 2010/01/11

yes and no.
the memory subsystem for Clarkdale is noticeably lower due to its design, but even then the CPU is never bandwidth starved, even with the slowest of DDR3 sticks.

Comment
from wutske@ 2010/01/11

okay, but now it's not only the CPU which needs the memory but also the GPU.
And some synthetic benchmark do benefit from the lower latencies (like on the AMD setup).

Comment
from Massman@ 2010/01/11

There are still issues with the current H55 mainboards in terms of delivering decent memory performance. Either the Clarkdale is just no good for high memory bandwidth, or the bioses are too immature.